Richard James ¬ Pictures in the Morning Location: Pembrokeshire, Wales, United KingdomAlbum release: April 23, 2012Record Label: Gwymon RecordsDuration:42:06Tracks:1. All Gone [4:39]2. Baby Blue [3:15]3. Sun Ease Pain [10:00]4. Say It Ain’t No Lie [4:01]5. Do You Know The Way to My Heart? [3:49]6. Dow to My Heart [4:52]7. Magical Day [3:50]8. Rolling Down [2:52]9. Yes My Love Died [4:48]Catalogue #: GWYMONCD015Label: http://www.gwymon.co.ukMySpace: http://www.myspace.com/richardjamesband#!Recordings:¬The Seven Sleepers Den (2006)¬We Went Riding (2010)¬Pictures in the Morning (2012) Keith Hargreaves; Thursday, 07 June 2012Pastoral reflections from Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci man.¬A quiet, gentle album this. Steeped in an early seventies Joe Boyd world of instruments in the right places and vocals hushed and understated. All acoustic guitar and Grantchester meadows.¬‘All Gone’ and ‘Baby Blue’ set the tone from the outset with beautiful, metronomic finger picking backed by almost reverential singing. ‘Sun Ease Pain’ really would not be out of place on ‘Pink Moon’ as one of the slight instrumentals that eventually flower into song. However when this blooms it has a more urgent tenor than Mr Drake. Although the lyricism seems to be rooted in that vernacular of 1972 – “Hope ma baby’s alright” being repeated as the guitars head for more discordant notes and stranger tones. ¬Eventually we beach on a calm spit and the guitar gently leads us to the coda before spiralling away again. So far so ‘Twelve Dreams of Dr Sardonicus’. This track has, however, raised the game of this album, taking far beyond the simple getting my head together in the country acoustic fun. ¬This is psychedelic but not in an arbitary way, it is considered and effective telling the narrative through the notes and cadences and changes of direction. Loved it. There is a rare beauty to this work that presents as simplistic but is anything but. It is layered and recorded with a warmth that seeps from the songs as the instruments fly. Genuine surprise. Highly recommended.Reviewers Score: 9/10 (Fortaken: http://www.americana-uk.com)

BBC Review:Fails to engage as emotionally as you’d expect from a musician of this stature.Rich Hanscomb 2012-06-18 ¬In an era of Internet-facilitated eclecticism it’s difficult to recall just how quietly revolutionary and endearingly out of step with prevailing musical trends Richard James’ first band, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, were.¬At odds with Britpop, they didn’t care about haircuts, and had journalists using words like “psychedelic” and “whimsical” to describe their music – about as uncool as you could get back then. Gorky’s took the more interesting elements of their baby-boomer parents’ heritage-rock record collection and created the kind of music that prefigured the Green Man generation. One could argue that Richard James has earned his dues.¬Three albums into a solo career, this offering is a conscious reaction to the DIY pocket symphonies of 2010’s We Went Riding. A low-key, intimate affair, Pictures in the Morning plays out like Bert Jansch’s Rosemary Lane, only not as affecting. Opening tracks All Gone and Baby Blue float by on a bed of deftly plucked acoustic guitars and hushed vocals, pleasant enough.It’s Sun Ease Pain, the album’s audacious and all-too-early high watermark, which really showcases James’ talent. Taking in American Primitive-style guitar moves and the kind of vocals that Crosby, Stills and Nash would have traded fringed jackets for, it soon segues into an instrumental passage vividly evoking the pastoral splendour of James’ native West Wales.¬The quality continues with Say It Aint No Lie, frail guitars conspiring to create syncopated, saccharine melodies that belie the lyric’s preoccupation with an ambiguous relationship. The over-arching vibe is a kind of wistful melancholy abruptly broken, albeit temporarily, by the incongruous Velvet Underground stomp of Magical Day. ¬Whether it’s the close-mike harmonies of Rolling Down or earnest thrum of Do You Know the Way to My Heart?, too little of what James has to offer here truly grabs the attention. While by no means a bad record, Pictures in the Morning inexplicably fails to engage as emotionally as you’d expect from a musician of this stature.¬Still, in places there are shafts of hopeful light filtering though the fug of tipi-tent-festival-folk, suggesting that James will be back stronger.